Some youths believed to be political urchins in Bauchi, stormed the venue of the declaration of the gubernatorial candidate of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) led by Nyesome Wike and unleashed terror on the people.
The urchins numbering not less than 10, armed with dangerous weapons, stormed the Secretariat of the PDP on Sunday, smashing parked buses, dismantling billboards, tearing posters and attacking innocent party members.
An eyewitness of the attack said that while the declaration was going on inside the hall, the political urchins suddenly appeared and started smashing the glasses and bodies of the parked vehicles along the Maiduguri bypass.
The eye witness disclosed that at the end of the attack, a total of fifteen buses were smashed and damaged by the urchins while a number of the party members were variously injured.
When contacted on Monday for official reaction to the development, the PPRO of Bauchi State Police Command, SP Nafiu Habib simply wrote, “I will find out, please.” He has not done so, as of the time of this report on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the State PDP has condemned the action of the political thugs describing it as very unfortunate and unbecoming.
Addressing Journalists at the NUJ Press Centre, late Monday evening, National Ex-Officio of the PDP, Mohamed Sabo Abubakar, said that, “I’m here to address the press on an incident that occurred yesterday (Sunday), while the party was conducting affirmation of its gubernatorial aspirant to become a full candidate in the forthcoming gubernatorial election in the 2027 general elections.”
He narrared that,”While the programme was going on, we heard a report that some thugs, three of them in number, went on a motorbike and smashed the windscreen and side glasses of five vehicles and ran away. This was when the programme was going on.”
He added that, “After the event, when people were leaving the venue of the event, that is the party Secretariat, there are some other thugs who were not part of our team. They went and scattered some of the billboards at the party Secretariat. So this we want to lament with all sense of expression of dismay about what happened.”
According to him,”And we are making an allegation that someone or a group of people sponsored them. We don’t want to make direct allegations that so-and-so person is the person that sponsored the thugs to come and do it, but we want to state categorically that this is the bad scenario that is not supposed to start happening at this initial stage of the forthcoming general election.”
The National Ex-Officio added that,”These were incidents that occurred in 2015 and 2017, when political atmosphere is becoming tense, this type of incidents usually occurred, especially from the ruling party, because they don’t want to be seeing opposition becoming more strong to face the challenges of the ruling party.”
“So, we therefore wish to call upon, especially the ruling party in the state, especially the Governor, to as a matter of great concern and in the interest of peace and peaceful atmosphere, political peaceful atmosphere, draw the attention of everybody and provide a peaceful platform for every political party to conduct its affairs without any hindrance, without any political thugs invading their events,” he stresses.
He added that,”Every political party has its own boys or rather had its own people that have been controlled to conduct themselves peacefully as we do in the PDP. So it will not augur well for any other person to go and start instigating their youths to go and be doing in parties, even go to the venue of the event that does not belong to them. These are scenarios that are going to generate a lot of violence, which we don’t want to happen in Bauchi state.”
“We therefore appeal to the ruling party, especially the Governor who is the leader of the State, to as a matter of concern, draw the attention of not only his party, but the attention of all the parties in the state to conduct themselves peacefully,” he added.
Sabo Abubakar concluded, “We are going to be at the sensitive side, henceforth, anything like this that happens, we are not going to contain it. So this in a short note is what brought us here to express our grievances, to lament what happened, and to draw the attention of the state leaders to, with immediate effect, take effective measures that will control this type of ugly incidents. Thank you.”
During the question and answer session, he said that,”Action has been initiated by the party. Official formal complaint has been lodged to the Police.”
Asked if his party is alleging that the APM led State Government has a hand in the attack, he responded, “No, no, no, my, I said we don’t want to believe that they have been sent by anybody to come and do it. Yeah, that’s what I said. And, you know, sometimes this type of youths, they used to go and over act without instruction of any other person. This is what we are believing now.”
He added,”So we don’t want to believe that anybody has sent them to do it. But if at all anybody has sent them to do it, please, let him please stop it. It’s not something that’s going to be condoned. This is what we are saying.”
